Sunday, March 6th... 6:00 PM Youth Fellowship
Monday, March 7th ...6:30 PM Property Mtg - Library
7:30 PM Finance Mtg - Library
Tuesday, March 8th ... 7:00 PM Bible Study
Wednesday, March 9th ... Ash Wednesday Service
Thursday, March 19th ... Choir Practice
Sunday March 13 CHANGE CLOCKS FORWARD ONE HOUR
8:00 AM Consistory Meeting
9:15 AM Sunday School Opening
9:30 Sunday School
10:30 Worship
THANKS TO PILGRIM CHURCH FAMILY!!
The folks at Crisis Ministries thank you all again for supplying over 450 items: canned goods, one bag of toiletries, six boxes of pediatric electrolytes, a huge box of new clothing and a huge box of socks. Thank you for your faithfulness.
Birthdays this week
Sunday, March 6th ... Marte Perrell
Friday, March ... Loretta Burton & Colin Knight
THIS PASTOR’S VIEWPOINT
For the week of March 6, 2011
In all of us there are common threads, things that are not unique to us individually, nor are they genetically endowed. They are simply traits we seem to share. One of these could be described as “not always noticing the obvious”.
Honestly now, how many times have you driven down the road, perhaps even the one you live on, and seen something you never noticed before. Something that was always in plain sight and then remarked aloud, “Gee, I never saw that before.”
Common, even obvious, things are often missed. I used to make walking sticks and was constantly looking for interesting young trees and then, one day, after passing it perhaps thousands of times I “discovered” the perfect one right beside the road, and though I thought I had seen every tree along that way, I had never noticed this one. It was the perfect walking stick and I have it still.
Therefore, it is not surprising that a gem of a verse jumped out at me suddenly in my Bible reading this week, and amazingly it’s a verse that’s repeated a number of times, but I just never really noticed it before.
I must admit that Numbers 1:54 (NLT) is not a verse that necessarily jumps out of the Bible with any great amount of profundity, at least at first glance, but its implications are far reaching for the Christian today. “So the Israelites did everything just as the Lord had commanded Moses.”
God had delivered them from 400 years of bondage and was instructing them in their manner of worship, and how they should get along with one another, and for a while they could boast that they did everything. Of course, we know it didn’t last. It wouldn’t be long before their desires for material things came into conflict with what the Lord had commanded.
So, how well do we, as Christians, measure up to the “new commandment” Jesus gave us “to love one another.” Will someone, someday, be able to say about us, “They did everything their Lord had commanded”? But then, don’t worry too much about the us, only the I, for that’s who each of us are responsible for.
Sermon
SET FREE THROUGH FORGIVENESS!
Matthew 18:21-22
21 Then Peter came to Jesus and asked, “Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother when he sins against me? Up to seven times?”
22 Jesus answered, “I tell you, not seven times, but seventy-seven times.
23 “Therefore, the kingdom of heaven is like a king who wanted to settle accounts with his servants. 24 As he began the settlement, a man who owed him ten thousand talents was brought to him. 25 Since he was not able to pay, the master ordered that he and his wife and his children and all that he had be sold to repay the debt.
26 “The servant fell on his knees before him. ‘Be patient with me,’ he begged, ‘and I will pay back everything.’ 27 The servant’s master took pity on him, canceled the debt and let him go.
28 “But when that servant went out, he found one of his fellow servants who owed him a hundred denarii. He grabbed him and began to choke him. ‘Pay back what you owe me!’ he demanded.
29 “His fellow servant fell to his knees and begged him, ‘Be patient with me, and I will pay you back.’
30 “But he refused. Instead, he went off and had the man thrown into prison until he could pay the debt. 31 When the other servants saw what had happened, they were greatly distressed and went and told their master everything that had happened.
32 “Then the master called the servant in. ‘You wicked servant,’ he said, ‘I canceled all that debt of yours because you begged me to. 33 Shouldn’t you have had mercy on your fellow servant just as I had on you?’ 34 In anger his master turned him over to the jailers to be tortured, until he should pay back all he owed.
35 “This is how my heavenly Father will treat each of you unless you forgive your brother from your heart.”
Just a few years back, a man in Hardeeville, South Carolina went down to the Jasper County Courthouse. There he filed a deed restriction. The restriction barred the sale of any part of his 1,688 acre plantation to anyone north of the Mason-Dixon Line and anyone named Sherman.
For the week of March 6, 2011
In all of us there are common threads, things that are not unique to us individually, nor are they genetically endowed. They are simply traits we seem to share. One of these could be described as “not always noticing the obvious”.
Honestly now, how many times have you driven down the road, perhaps even the one you live on, and seen something you never noticed before. Something that was always in plain sight and then remarked aloud, “Gee, I never saw that before.”
Common, even obvious, things are often missed. I used to make walking sticks and was constantly looking for interesting young trees and then, one day, after passing it perhaps thousands of times I “discovered” the perfect one right beside the road, and though I thought I had seen every tree along that way, I had never noticed this one. It was the perfect walking stick and I have it still.
Therefore, it is not surprising that a gem of a verse jumped out at me suddenly in my Bible reading this week, and amazingly it’s a verse that’s repeated a number of times, but I just never really noticed it before.
I must admit that Numbers 1:54 (NLT) is not a verse that necessarily jumps out of the Bible with any great amount of profundity, at least at first glance, but its implications are far reaching for the Christian today. “So the Israelites did everything just as the Lord had commanded Moses.”
God had delivered them from 400 years of bondage and was instructing them in their manner of worship, and how they should get along with one another, and for a while they could boast that they did everything. Of course, we know it didn’t last. It wouldn’t be long before their desires for material things came into conflict with what the Lord had commanded.
So, how well do we, as Christians, measure up to the “new commandment” Jesus gave us “to love one another.” Will someone, someday, be able to say about us, “They did everything their Lord had commanded”? But then, don’t worry too much about the us, only the I, for that’s who each of us are responsible for.
Sermon
SET FREE THROUGH FORGIVENESS!
Matthew 18:21-22
21 Then Peter came to Jesus and asked, “Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother when he sins against me? Up to seven times?”
22 Jesus answered, “I tell you, not seven times, but seventy-seven times.
23 “Therefore, the kingdom of heaven is like a king who wanted to settle accounts with his servants. 24 As he began the settlement, a man who owed him ten thousand talents was brought to him. 25 Since he was not able to pay, the master ordered that he and his wife and his children and all that he had be sold to repay the debt.
26 “The servant fell on his knees before him. ‘Be patient with me,’ he begged, ‘and I will pay back everything.’ 27 The servant’s master took pity on him, canceled the debt and let him go.
28 “But when that servant went out, he found one of his fellow servants who owed him a hundred denarii. He grabbed him and began to choke him. ‘Pay back what you owe me!’ he demanded.
29 “His fellow servant fell to his knees and begged him, ‘Be patient with me, and I will pay you back.’
30 “But he refused. Instead, he went off and had the man thrown into prison until he could pay the debt. 31 When the other servants saw what had happened, they were greatly distressed and went and told their master everything that had happened.
32 “Then the master called the servant in. ‘You wicked servant,’ he said, ‘I canceled all that debt of yours because you begged me to. 33 Shouldn’t you have had mercy on your fellow servant just as I had on you?’ 34 In anger his master turned him over to the jailers to be tortured, until he should pay back all he owed.
35 “This is how my heavenly Father will treat each of you unless you forgive your brother from your heart.”
Just a few years back, a man in Hardeeville, South Carolina went down to the Jasper County Courthouse. There he filed a deed restriction. The restriction barred the sale of any part of his 1,688 acre plantation to anyone north of the Mason-Dixon Line and anyone named Sherman.
It seems that more than a century before, General William T. Sherman’s troops burned every building on this man’s property and Mr. Ingram vowed never to let his plantation fall into Yankee hands again.
Now there’s a man who knows how to hold a grudge. Unfortunately, he’s not alone.
An integral part of the Christian ethic is forgiveness. Our Lord taught us, that before we can be forgiven, we must forgive others. This emphasis on forgiveness distinguishes us from every other religion on earth.
Imagine how different our world would be today if, after the Second World War, people living in Allied countries could not have forgiven the peoples of Germany, Japan and Italy.
Think how broken our world would be. In fact, those countries are some of our closest allies today. The inability to put the past behind is one of the key hindrances to peace in the Mid-east in the modern world.
Many years ago, Colonel Jeff O’Leary served as part of the UN peacekeeping forces in the Sinai Peninsula region. While there, he encountered a number of nomadic Bedouin people who travel this desert region.
One afternoon, Colonel O’Leary had tea with a group of Bedouin men. Colonel O’Leary couldn’t help but notice that his host kept staring at a man who was tending his camels. The host pointed out the man and hissed at Colonel O’Leary, “Do you see that man? He is a camel thief.” Colonel O’Leary wanted to know why his host would hire a camel thief to tend his camels, so he began asking questions.
Turns out that in his host’s eyes this man was a camel thief because he came from a family of camel thieves. Why were they a family of camel thieves? Because one of their ancestors had once stolen some camels from this man’s family.
How long ago, O’Leary asked. Eight hundred years ago, the Bedouin host replied. For eight hundred years, the hosts’ family and this man’s family had hated each other, because one man had stolen the other man’s camels. For eight hundred years, the host’s family had passed down the story of the camel thief.
Forgiveness was not an option for them. In the Bedouin host’s mind, the crime was just as horrible as if it had occurred yesterday, and this man was just as much a thief as his ancestor who had actually stolen the camel.
Imagine how difficult it would be to build a better world if all the peoples of the world operated on this same principle. The world would be without hope, indeed. There are many people who have been deluded by the idea that all the world’s religions are the same. Friends, this world needs Jesus.
And one of the reasons the world needs Jesus is that people need to know how to forgive their neighbor. Of course, this is not only true of the world in general. It is also true of individual people, people like you and me.
There was a scene in the motion picture, Waiting to Exhale, where a woman, victimized by her husband’s infidelity, gathers up his clothes, his shoes, his personal belongings, and stuffs them into his expensive Mercedes. When the closets and drawers are empty, she returns to the car, sets a torch to the contents, and stands there with tears streaming down her cheeks as the evidence of her marriage goes up in flames.
“Most of us would have probably cheered, well maybe not the men. But one lady said she cried, because the woman’s defiant gesture of closure did nothing to heal the woundedness of her heart.”
A bit of revenge may have lifted that woman’s heart for a moment. But to move toward healing, she would have to learn as we all must learn how to forgive.
Christian author Jill Briscoe was counseling a woman who also was dealing with a great load of emotional pain. In the course of their conversation, the woman blurted out, “My husband abused me.”
Slowly, she shared the painful details of her suffering. Finally, she asked the woman, “When did this happen?” And the woman replied, “Twenty years ago.”
Twenty years ago! I don’t want to seem insensitive, but wow, it is time for that woman to let go and move on.
Because she had never healed emotionally from the abusive relationship, the pain was still just as intense in her mind as on the day he first hit her. Until she could work through her pain and forgive her ex-husband, this woman would continue to relive her pain and fear.
Dr. Michael Brickley, a psychologist who studies successful aging in our culture claims that most people who make it to 100 years old, or more have learned to get rid of “emotional baggage” from the past. Old hurts, past failures, unfinished business, unresolved relationships, and regret most of these elderly have learned how to process these issues in a healthy manner and let them go.
There are some things about forgiveness we ought to accept. First of all, you can never be free to be a whole person if you are unable to forgive. Past hurts become intolerable baggage as time goes on.
When Nelson Mandela was released from prison he was filled with hate for his captors and said, “I hated them for what they had taken from me. Then, I sensed an inner voice saying to me, ‘Nelson! For twenty seven years you were their prisoner, but you were always a free man! Don’t allow them to make you into a free man, only to turn you into their prisoner!’”
You can never be free to be a whole person if you are unable to forgive. You see that, don’t you? There are many people who are imprisoned by their own anger, their own hurt, their own inability to let go of the past and move on.
Here’s the other thing we need to see about forgiveness: There is only one place you can find the ability to forgive. It is at the throne of Christ.
What happens when you turn anywhere else for help in dealing with your hurt and anger except to Christ? Rather than feeling better, you feel worse. Rather than getting clean, you feel dirtier and dirtier. You need God’s help. You need to ask God to forgive your sins, and then you need to ask God to give you the ability to forgive others.
Corrie ten Boom often thought back over the horrors of the Ravensbruck concentration camp. How could she ever forgive the former Nazis who had been her jailers? Where was love, acceptance, and forgiveness in a horror camp where more than 95,000 women died? How could she ever forget the horrible cruelty of the guards and the smoke constantly coming from the chimney of the crematorium?
Then in 1947 Corrie was speaking in a church in Munich, and when the meeting was over she saw one of the most cruel male guards of Ravensbruck coming forward to speak to her. He had his hand outstretched. “I have become a Christian,” he explained. “I know that God has forgiven me for the cruel things I did, but I would like to hear it from your lips as well. Fraulein, will you forgive me?”
A conflict raged in Corrie’s heart. The Spirit of God urged her to forgive. The spirit of bitterness and coldness urged her to turn away. “Jesus, help me,” she prayed. Then she knew what she must do. “I can lift my hand,” she thought to herself. “I can do that much.”
As their hands met it was as if warmth and healing broke forth with tears and joy. “I forgive you, brother, with all my heart,” she said. Later Corrie testified that “it was the power of the Holy Spirit” who had poured the love of God into her heart that day. I don’t know any other way true forgiveness can take place. We turn our hurt over to God. We ask God for the ability to forgive.
Peter thought that he was bighearted: “How often should I forgive someone who sins against me,” he asked. “As many as seven times?” After all, he was being generous; seven times went beyond what the rabbis asked. “Forgive three times, but not the fourth,” taught the rabbis of his time. Peter multiplied what they asked by two and added one more time of forgiveness for good measure!
But in Jesus’ eyes it was not enough. Jesus knew that unless forgiveness is total and unlimited, healing could not take place. Jesus knew that the person who cannot forgive remains a prisoner. And Jesus knew that there is only one place where forgiveness may be found.
And that is as true today as it was then. Is there someone you need to forgive? A member of your own family perhaps? A spouse, a sister, a parent? Perhaps it is someone you work with.
Do not delay. Bring it to the throne of Christ today. And having brought it, leave it.
Amen.
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